FROM THE LIFE
established by the incident. He supported it in confirmatory silence.
9
And yet something had changed in him. As soon as he woke up that morning he said to his mother, "I want to go to school." She took him to the dentist instead. A few days later he went to his father and said, sulkily, "I want to go to school."
He had never been sent to school—and the authorities had not insisted that he should be sent—because it was understood that he was too "dumb" to learn. His father had given him that reputation; he wanted the boy at home to watch the cows; there were no secure fences on the Murdock farm, and Ben spent his days in the wood and pasture-lot as stupidly as a watch-dog. The father himself was "queer." He had not been quite right since he had fallen from a load of hay, struck his head, and been unconscious for three days "right smack in the middle o' the best hayin' weather."
He replied, now: "School nuthin'. Might 's well send those calfs to school. Go 'n' do yer chores."
The boy went back to his work, and nothing more was said about school. But the incident of Heins and the sickle followed; and that night, milking in the stable, Ben took up a pitchfork and
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